“You have the index to my mother’s mind—that cost me years of search. She learns one thing at a time. She has no faculty for making logical deductions. When she tries to apply a known principle to a new set of conditions the chances are nine to one that she will go wrong.”
As he spoke, the woman’s eyes turned to Theodora ... impelled by some unrecognized attraction. The little head was nodding in sage approval. She was only half conscious of what those two were saying. The fact that it was intimate—confidential—sufficed. Things were coming on, entirely to her liking. It was almost the end of June, and she wanted to be sure there would be no backslidings, while she and her mother were in Minneapolis, the following month. She had never been anywhere—excepting the week in St. Louis for the Exposition, when she was seven—and a trip up the river on a steamer had been particularly alluring. Now she would almost rather not go. She might be needed. Oh, not to patch up a quarrel! Lary and Lady Judith were too wellbred for that. But Lary did need to have his courage bucked up, now and then.
She was only a child, she reflected, but she knew that when people were in love, they had no business mooning around in the dark—in separate yards. She could go over the wall without touching anything but her hands. And Lary was much more athletic than she. Besides, the gate was there—even if mamma did padlock it, one morning. What if Lady Judith should try to go through that gate—and have her feelings hurt!
IV
Theodora glanced up from her troubled musings to perceive that she was quite alone in the attic. They had gone and left her. They had forgotten all about her. She sprang from the packing case and danced for joy. It was the first time in all her life that Lary had forgotten her. It was the best omen of all. They were standing at the foot of the stairs—and they weren’t saying a word. She paused, on tiptoe, afraid to breathe lest she break the witching spell. What did people think about, when they were all alone in that kind of heaven? Now she heard their feet on the lower stairs. She hurried to the window to see them go down to the grassy plot before the house, where her father joined them.
The rosy picture was obscured, in an instant, as if she had spilled the ink bottle over it, and daddy’s danger loomed before her. She trudged wearily down to join them on the grass. Things never were what you thought they were going to be. When she reached the edge of the veranda, a pair of strong arms caught her in a yearning embrace.
“Aren’t you going to congratulate your papa?”
“If there’s any reason. Did you get the Marksley contract?”
David’s transparent face darkened.
“Yes ... but that’s not a matter for congratulation. I figured so high that I counted on escaping. I didn’t want it at any price.”